In the medical industry, the use of very sophisticated electronic equipment is becoming commonplace. The instrumentation of this equipment, especially in the ultrasound area, is requiring large numbers of terminations of very small diameter interconnecting wires. For example, 1,000 conductor cables may have to be terminated to a crystal in an area measuring only 3/8.times.3/4 inches. In such a case up to 400 positions may have to be arranged within an area of about 0.062 square inches. An additional complexity, resulting from the need to minimize leakage of the low level signals carried by these conductors, the conductors are usually of the coaxial type. These coaxial cables may be as small as 0.008 inch in diameter. In practice, the transducer and equipment are interconnected by means of these cables.
In the process of diagnostic examination of a patient, a particular cable assembly is selected from a rack containing a number of cable assemblies each having a unique type of transducer attached to one end. The other end, which is terminated to a connector, is then plugged into the diagnostic equipment. During the normal course of an examination, as many as 20 different transducer-cables may be alternately used.
At the present state of the art in the industry, these fine coaxial cables are being terminated manually. The procedure is done under a microscope by a skilled technician who must strip the outer plastic cover from the cable, wipe the braid or helical shield back, and tin the shield and core wire, all being done prior to terminating the coaxial conductor to the transducer or connector. It takes about 12 hours of a technician's time to terminate a 128 conductor shielded cable in this manner. It is the purpose of the present invention to eliminate most of the manual labor involved in this work and to provide a method and apparatus for automation of these time consuming manual steps.